Wilmington, NC News

Archive for October, 2011

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Three men from our area are among 24 people arrested in a statewide child porn crackdown.

They include Bruce Wayne Lorette, 32, who the SBI arrested October 20 in Brunswick County on ten counts of Third Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor (Possession of Child Pornography).

Daniel Joseph Nilsson (photo, above left), 32, of Surf City was arrested on August 17 and charged with six counts of Second Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor (Distribution of Child Pornography). Nilsson is a USMC Captain.

Ivey Floyd Cook (photo, above right), 48, has been in the New Hanover County jail since October 18 under $50,000 bond. He faces three counts of Second Degree Exploitation of a Minor (Distribution of Child Pornography).

Attorney General Roy Cooper and the state’s three federal prosecutors say advances in Internet investigation technology are allowing them to find and arrest child pornography traffickers without anyone calling in tips.

Cooper says investigators serving search warrants to seize computers found hundreds of thousands of illegal photos and videos of abused children, some as young as three.

Cooper says child porn cases require lots of time and effort to track and prosecute, but technology is making the hunt easier.

GREENSBORO, NC (AP) — A federal judge denied on Thursday a bid by former presidential candidate John Edwards to have the criminal case against him thrown out, paving the way for a trial to begin in January.

US District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles said in Greensboro that the five motions to dismiss are being denied without prejudice, meaning Edwards’s lawyers can use them at a later date. The former US senator is charged with using campaign funds to cover up an affair he had during his unsuccessful bid for the White House and then submitting false campaign finance reports to cover his tracks. He has pleaded not guilty.

Edwards was in the courtroom and displayed no visible reaction to the decision.

Edwards and his defense team argue that the federal government’s case depends on a completely novel set of legal arguments that have never been validated by a court. But Eagles said it may be that the facts of his case are unique and untested.

The 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, eventually fathering a child. Prosecutors contend that Edwards used money from donors far in excess of legal campaign limits to keep the dalliance under wraps.

Much of the undisclosed money was funneled to Andrew Young, a close aide to Edwards who left the campaign and falsely claimed paternity of the senator’s illegitimate child. Young and his wife invited the pregnant Hunter to live in their home near Chapel Hill and later traveled with her as tabloid reporters sought to expose the candidate’s extramarital affair.

Edwards’s lawyers argue that if the prosecution’s case succeeds, it could theoretically mean that any money a candidate spends while running for office could be classified as a campaign expense, which they say would twist federal law completely out of shape.

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — A man loading a moving truck in Brunswick County was hit and killed today by a car. Highway Patrol says the 63-year-old, who’s name has not been released, was loading the truck on Green Hill Road near Duffer Blvd.

Troopers say the driver of a car heading east on Green Hill Road was blinded by the sun and hit the man. No charges have been filed at this time.